Developmental Project 1 (Dr. Jianghong Rao-PI) - Dr. Rao will develop novel trans-splicing ribosomal strategies to image levels of messenger RNA (mRNA) in cells and living mice. This project is a fundamental assay development project and is similar to Research Project 1 (Sam Gambhir PI), in that it attempts to develop a fundamentally new assay, although for a different molecular target. This developmental project should eventually lead to a library of imaging probes each specific for a given mRNA and therefore should be a highly generalizable approach. These approaches can help studies of basic cancer biology and help to image efficacy of novel anti-cancer therapies (including antisense therapies targeted at mRNA).